Amazon’s Sales on the Move and 2 Hot Stocks to Watch

Seoul-based KB Financial Group which was in the running to acquire South Korean life insurance company ING Life Insurance from ING Group NV (NYSE:ING), has withdrawn its $2.1 billion bid as its board of directors considered the deal too risky from financial and political risk standpoints.

Data from ChannelAdvisor shows Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) sales for the first two weeks of December rose 25.7% compared to the same period last year. Ebay (NASDAQ:EBAY) was similarly up 23.4% and CSE achieved 10.9% growth. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) would be concerned to note that search was down 18.8% compared to last year.

The promise of chemical wizardry that transforms natural gas into liquid fuels such as diesel has led South Africa-based Sasol Limited (NYSE:SSL) to consider an investment of up to $14 billion to build a gas-to-liquids plant in Louisiana where a shale drilling boom has produced huge quantities of cheap gas. The view from Exxon (NYSE:XOM) however, is sceptical. “The reason you see so few G.T.L. plants is the economics are challenged at best. We do not see it being a relevant source of fuels over the next 20 years,” says an executive.